The Recent Pastry Unpleasantness in Colorado

Everybody's talking about that Fr. Don Armstrong pie-in-the-face thang. MadPriest has a post and conversation, and they're going on about it at Father Jake's, también. Revdo. Richard is asking what kind of pie one likes to eat, and what kind of pie one likes to toss!

Now, I loves me the ol' pie-in-the-face shtick but I'm agin' it in church. I once worked as a musician at a Roman Catholic Church in down-town San José, California, and we were close to many Half-way houses. Many of the residents would visit the church on the fifth Sunday of the month, when they appeared to run out of their medications, and they would act up during the service. I actually had a guy grab me by the throat and hold me up against the wall because he was "Catholic and we don't do music in church." There was also the gal my sister and I named "Ginny-flick" because she would kneel in the front row and start doing the sign of the cross, getting faster and faster until she finally flipped the crucifix the bird and left. She did this every fifth Sunday! So, I gits nervous when people behave even a little bit strangely during the service. And if some guy pops up and starts heading for the pulpit while I'm in there, I'm gonna be a little worried. So, as funny as a pie-in-the-face may be, I will not condone such activity during the service.
HOWEVER pie-in-the-face during Coffee Hour? BRING IT ON, DUDE! Heck, I'm all for giving Fr. Don Armstrong a pie-in-the-face, bucket-of-water-on-the-head, whoopie cushion, and noogies during Coffee Hour. Heck, I'd pay to see a film of it, specially if Archbishop Akinola is within splatter range!

One must be careful with the pie-in-the-face stuff. During my Wayward Youth, I spent three or more years in the Divine Light Mission, a psuedo-Hindu "Meditation Group" with the 16 year-old Perfect Master and Lord of the Universe, Maharaj-ji. Once, when he was in Detroit, he was giving one of his boring, inane satsangs (Company of Truth, but really a boring discourse) and got hit in the face with a pie (Hey, maybe that's what happened at Grace-CANA; it was a boring discourse. We all read that terrible Easter Sunday sermon!). The Boy Guru wiped the cream off his face and made a joke (I tried to find a photo), but a Mahatma (Great Soul, but really the clergy of the cult) invited the pie thrower (a reporter for an Underground paper) to a private "Knowledge Session" (initiation into the cult, in which one is taught the four meditation techniques. I'll tell you all about them some time, but it's really embarrassing!) but when the guy's eyes were closed, hit him over the head with a lead pipe (being the scamp I am, I started referring to that as "Detroit Satsang."). The reporter almost died! The cult, being the wonderful citizens that they were, smuggled the Mahatma out of the country.

So, be careful with those cream pies!

UPDATE: El Almirante de Moralidad has a wonderful recipe for Blueberry-Anglican-Crumble-Pie worth baking.
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